Fleet Street has sent some pretty rackety witnesses to Lord Justice Leveson's phone hacking inquiry, dozy enough to shame the Street of Shame. But Neil "Wolfman"Wallis, who turned up for a second helping on Monday, wasn't one of them. Cheerful and doggedly unabashed, worldly and articulate, he's smart and knows it.

After three hours of cross-examination in the high court in the Strand it was still obvious, except perhaps to the witness, that the Metropolitan police were being wildly inappropriate when they employed Andy Coulson's former deputy at the News of the World as a £1,000 a day PR adviser, especially one who turned out to be still flogging police stories to his old papers.

But it was more obvious than ever why the Met must have thought it was a good idea. By the end of the session the great schmoozer was generously advising Judge Leveson on how to write his report on better media regulation. Good advice it was too, just what Leveson needs. But no, it would be inappropriate.

But Wolfman, bearded, compact and famous for employing reporters shorter than himself, also chuckled a lot for a man in a tight corner, who's been arrested and could face charges. Had he been pleased when his friend (protege?) John Stevens became the new Met commissioner in succession to his friend, Paul Condon? "It was the opposite of a perfect storm – a perfect sunburst." Wallis would later ghost-write The Chief, Stevens's NoW column.

And what about ex-anti-terrorism chief Andy Hayman, whose sideline was terrorising his expenses. Was he hard to buy a drink for? asked Robert Jay, QC for the inquiry. "I didn't have to arm-twist him." Did Wallis recall ever buying champagne for Hayman or for high-flier John ("an immensely impressive bloke, very clever") Yates, both of whom have since resigned. Wallis: "I don't like champagne." Jay: "I'm not quite sure that was an answer to my question … you might not have drink it." Wallis: "Not to my knowledge … I prefer a dry white wine."

Like most tabloid witnesses here he couldn't hide his disdain for Nick Davies's expose of Scotland Yard complicity in the phone hacking culture. They make jokes about "wonderful newspapers that most people don't read" (you said that last time, protested Jay), but Wallis was more gracious than most. Explaining that journalists are only as good as their contacts, he said that even Nick Davies didn't get his hacking leaks "from someone he met last week".

As so often in court 73 the trouble yesterday was one of bifurcation, whereby well-documented tabloid excesses, some Wallis-related, are barely visible. The Neil Wallis visible to voters watching the televised hearings was "Joe Citizen" (his own description), concerned about catching paedophiles, assorted crooks, and drug-addicted mothers trying to sell their teenage daughter's virginity. No doubt about it, he cares about the Met and works for papers which – "like most people" – are "pro-police, pro-army and pro-law and order".

Pro-law phone hacking? Good tabloid operators don't do irony, it's unsettling, and Wallis is clearly a very good tabloid man. Telling Leveson the sort of advice he gives his Met chums is about "the life and death of a story", how "if you get to the weekend and it isn't in the Sunday papers it's over". Good simple advice for which all sorts of organisations would pay £1,000 a day.

The only time the Wolfman showed his fangs came when he admitted being "a bit raw" about the breach of his own daughter's privacy over her work experience at the Met. He'd been shopped by two senior coppers who'd pulled exactly the same strings for their own kids. Privacy? The irony problem again.

Wallis was scornful of Jay's laboured efforts to establish that the drinks, dinners and shared football matches were designed to give the NoW a "special place," an inside track at the Met, a two-way trade in information. It was clear he didn't like Ian Blair, a disaster as Met commissioner who was cerebral, tabloid-hating and politically correct (ie, a bit Labour) as distinct from Lord Stevens, who was "a proper non-political copper" (ie Tory). Would a brave and brilliant officer like him be bought for drinks, he asked.

Good question, and it fitted his strategy of playing down his own importance, his journalist's instinct for "a hoofing great story" for which he would not hesitate to dump on anyone. Two phrases which kept recurring were "that's human nature" and "it's the way of the world". Even civil servants get lunched and leaky. Too leaky, he was asked. "Sadly … not leaky enough."

Right at the end, Wallis made a serious pitch for a more open society like America's, one in which we all get told more (his remedy for most things, preferably via an NoW exclusive). There was far less intrusion on privacy than 20 years ago. The McCanns? Awful, he felt for them, but blamed the Portuguese police, clearly not mates of Wolfman. Lord Leveson wondered if Wallis-style openness would mean sharing inside track information with all media. What, sharing his great ideas with the rivals? Wolfman was horrified.